Dealing with Dragons
core novel 1990 The Enchanted Forest Chronicles
Record
| First published | 1990 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.16 (95,030 ratings, collected 2026-08-27) |
| Page count | 240 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780152045661 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Dealing with Dragons opens the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Princess Cimorene, weary of the rigid expectations placed on a proper princess, rejects an arranged marriage to a dull prince and instead runs away to volunteer as the captive princess of the dragon Kazul, taking on household duties and organizing Kazul's hoard rather than waiting to be rescued. Her new life is disrupted when a faction of wizards, having obtained the toxic herb dragonsbane, poisons the reigning King of the Dragons with the help of the ambitious dragon Woraug. The poisoning triggers a contested process to choose a new dragon ruler, and Cimorene finds herself drawn into uncovering the wizards' scheme to manipulate the succession and gain access to the treasure-filled Caves of Fire and Night. The novel won the 1991 Minnesota Book Award for Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles
- Series: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles core; position 1 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Patricia C. Wrede
Notes
- From the series record (The Enchanted Forest Chronicles): A comic fantasy quartet; Talking to Dragons was written and published first (1985) but reads last in internal chronology and was revised in 1993 to match the later books.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Enchanted Forest Chronicles: position 2 of 4: previous Talking to Dragons (1985) · next Searching for Dragons (1991)
- Internal chronology, within The Enchanted Forest Chronicles: position 1 of 4: next Searching for Dragons (1991)
Sources
← The Enchanted Forest Chronicles dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.